We Can Fight Each Other or We Can End Injustice
In this episode, we sit down with social psychologist, Dr. Melanie Joy, to explore her groundbreaking concept of “carnism” - the belief system that conditions people to see eating animals as normal, natural, and necessary. Dr. Joy offers insights into how hidden ideologies shape behavior, and how building relational literacy can foster healthier relationships across social movements. Highlights include:
How the three 'N's’ - normal, natural, necessary - are used to justify systems like carnism and pronatalism, and how dismantling these myths creates space for more compassionate choices;
How cognitive distortions like objectification and dichotomization impact both human and animal relationships, perpetuating cycles of violence and oppression;
Why dysregulated people dysregulate people and the formula for healthy relating;
How relational literacy can empower activists to communicate skillfully, avoid burnout, and avoid infighting.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
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Melanie Joy 0:00
Basically, when you're dysregulated, it means that your nervous system is out of balance. People who are activists, particularly those who have trauma from their activism, you know what it feels like to get dysregulated. And when we are dysregulated we have less access to our rational faculties and we're less connected with our empathy. And we're more likely to dysregulate other people. We're less likely to be able to communicate skillfully and relate in a way that's helpful. Dysregulated people dysregulate people. So the number one thing, in my opinion, that any of us can do who wants to work to create a better world is to fully commit to our own regulation.
Alan Ware 0:39
In this episode of the Overpopulation Podcast, we talk with social psychologist, Dr. Melanie Joy, best known for coining and popularizing the term carnism, about how to make more compassionate, relationally literate choices that advance personal, social, and ecological transformation.
Nandita Bajaj 1:06
Welcome to the Overpopulation Podcast, where we tirelessly make ecological overshoot and overpopulation common knowledge. That's the first step in right-sizing the scale of our human footprint, so that it is in balance with life on Earth, enabling all species to thrive. I'm Nandita Bajaj, co-host of the podcast and executive director of Population Balance.
Alan Ware 1:29
I'm Alan Ware, co-host of the podcast and researcher with Population Balance. We are proud to be the first and only nonprofit organization globally that draws the connections between pronatalism, human supremacy, social inequalities, and ecological overshoot. Our mission at Population Balance is to inspire narrative, behavioral, and system change that shrinks our human impact and elevates the rights and wellbeing of people, animals, and the planet. And now on to today's guest. Dr. Melanie Joy is an award-winning psychologist and educator, and she's the author of seven books, including the best-selling Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows and How to End Injustice Everywhere. Her work has been featured in major media outlets around the world, and she has received a number of awards, including the Ahimsa Award, previously given to the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela for her work on global nonviolence. Melanie has given talks and training in over 50 countries, and she is also the founding president of the international NGO Beyond Carnism. You can learn more about her work at carnism.org. And now on to today's interview.
Nandita Bajaj 2:45
Welcome Melanie. We are so excited to have you with us today.
Melanie Joy 2:48
Thank you. I'm really looking forward to this conversation and really happy to talk about and support the work you're doing.
Nandita Bajaj 2:55
And especially, you know, with you being a psychologist, you bring such a unique approach to understanding some of our distorted beliefs about animals, but also oppressive social hierarchies in general. And so this psychology-informed framing has been a welcome addition to the broader arena of anti-oppression work, and we're thrilled to learn more about this. So Melanie, we'll begin with a term that you coined, something that you really popularized - called carnism - to describe the invisible belief system that conditions people to eat animals, or you make clear, certain animals. And it's something most people don't even think to question, because it's so deeply embedded in our culture. Could you share with us why you felt it was necessary to create this term and how naming the belief system changes the way we think about it?
Melanie Joy 3:52
I didn't want to write a book about why people shouldn't eat animals. There were a lot of great books at the time already about the problems with animal agriculture. I wanted to write a book about why people do eat animals in the first place. And this desire came out of my own life experience. I've talked about this before, just for listeners who aren't familiar with it. I grew up, like many people, with a dog who I loved, and I also grew up eating meat and eggs and dairy. And I was, of course, a person who, like many people who really cared about my impact on other animals, and would never want to contribute to harm to animals. You know, especially when that harm was just extensive and intensive and completely unnecessary, and yet, as I said, I grew up eating animals regularly. And over the course of so many years and so many meals, I just never made the connection between the meat on my plate or eggs or dairy on my plate and the living being. I didn't connect the dots. It wasn't until 1989 where everything changed for me, and I was 23 at the time, and I had eaten a hamburger that was contaminated with Campylobacter. And I wound up hospitalized on intravenous antibiotics, very, very sick. And after that experience, I stopped eating meat. I basically became a vegetarian by accident, not because of any conscious ethical choice, but just because I was so disgusted by the last food that I had consumed. So I had to, like, learn about my diet and learn how to cook for myself. And of course, this information led me to information about animal agriculture, and I was just absolutely shocked and horrified. I could not believe the extent of the harm caused to nonhuman animals, to the environment - and this was back in the 80s, where they didn't know anywhere near you know what people know today - and also to human health. Shortly thereafter, I became a vegan.
Anyway, I was shocked, but what shocked me in some ways even more was that nobody I talked to about what I was learning was willing to hear what I had to say. They would respond by saying things like, Don't tell me that, you'll ruin my meal. Or they'd call me a radical vegan hippie propagandist, right? The conversation just shut down. So I became very curious as to how rational, caring, and compassionate people - like I had been my whole life, or so I thought - could just stop thinking when it came to this issue of eating animals just like I had done. Why weren't they connecting the dots? Where was this defensiveness coming from? And this was what led me to do my research on the psychology of eating animals, which was essentially on the psychology of oppression, violence and nonviolence more broadly, and to identify what I came to call carnism. And I felt that it was really important to do this research, because so often, and this is true with all different types of social issues, information alone is not enough. So often, those of us who really care about a cause feel like if other people only knew the truth with a capital T, the Truth then, for example, they'll never eat animals again. But often that just isn't the case. People can see the truth and they can be horrified, and yet, the next day, they're right back at the McDonald's drive through. So I really wanted to understand the deeper mentality that basically caused rational, compassionate people to act in ways that were irrational and uncompassionate, and to drive harmful behaviors and act against their interests and the interests of others without realizing what they were doing. And this was what led me to identify carnism.
And with the identification of the system, basically I identified the system, and then I worked to really deconstruct it and look at like, how is this structured? And most importantly, what are the specific psychological mechanisms? They're defense mechanisms essentially, the ways that we do mental gymnastics that keep this system alive, that prevent the conversation that needs to happen from happening, where people are deeply conditioned. When we're born into a dominant, oppressive system like carnism, we learn to look at the world through the lens of that system, and the system deeply conditions people to resist anyone or anything that would get them out of the box they don't realize they're in and to not see the bias that is essentially everywhere. When people study nutrition, they're actually studying carnistic nutrition. They're studying carnistic medicine. And so we're just so steeped in this carnistic mentality, and we've so deeply internalized these carnistic defenses, that I really wanted to have a book that illuminated the psychology, because once you make these defenses visible, they lose at least some of their power. And people are more able to make their food choices freely. Without awareness of the way that their mind has essentially been shaped for them when it comes to certain isms like carnism, there's no free choice.
Nandita Bajaj 8:35
And I love that you began with your own story, because just as you said, it's a dominant narrative, which means most of us within the modern dominant culture grew up with that belief system. And I love the name of your book, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows, because right away it shows the mental gymnastics we have engaged in as a culture. These are agreed upon values that certain animals are companion animals, other animals are fashion, and yet others are entertainment or research subjects. And it's a good entry point to exposing that worldview.
Melanie Joy 9:17
You were talking about, how you know in our culture, the way that we relate to nonhuman animals, there's different ways. And, I know you know this, but I should point out for listeners that carnism is a global phenomenon, right? So in meat-eating cultures around the world, members of all cultures basically learn to classify a select group of animals as edible, and all the rest are classified as inedible. And members of all cultures tend to find their own choices to be rational and the choices of other cultures to be irrational, disgusting, and often even morally offensive. So the mentality is consistent from culture to culture, even though the type of species consumed changes from culture to culture. And the response that people have to the idea of eating an animal, the flesh of a species that they haven't been conditioned to think of as edible, that's their authentic response. How you feel about the idea of eating golden retriever, that's your authentic response - the response you would have, if not for these years, decades of conditioning.
Alan Ware 10:13
As a social psychologist, you understand those broader social frames and social norms that got at some of the sense of belonging that people found when you were challenging their carnism. They had been enculturated completely into belongingness of carnistic practices that, as you mentioned, are then institutionalized in medicine, schools, the school lunch program, the laws treating animals as property. So all of your social psychology seems to have situated you well to understand the grounding and all the social element. And you've written about the three N's of justification - that something is natural, normal, and necessary as the myths that sustain carnism. Could you unpack each of those and explain how they're used to rationalize not only the system of carnism but other systems of oppression that you discuss in your work?
Melanie Joy 11:06
So in Why We Love Dogs I talk about these carnistic defense mechanisms. These are psychological defenses. Basically, they exist to uphold the idea that eating animals is the right thing to do and to mitigate or help us feel better with the cognitive dissonance that most people experience when it comes to eating animals. Cognitive dissonance is the internal discomfort that we feel when our values and our behaviors are not aligned. And, so these defense mechanisms that I write about, one of which is justification, that we'll talk about in minute, is these are designed to assuage that feeling of internal moral discomfort that most people do actually feel. And so one defense is justification. And the way that we learn to justify eating animals is by learning to believe that the myths of eating animals are the facts of eating animals. And there's a vast mythology surrounding eating animals, but all of these myths fall under what I refer to as the three N's of justification.
Eating animals is normal, natural, and necessary. And not surprisingly, these same arguments have been used to justify violent practices throughout human history, from male dominance to heterosexual supremacy. So it's important to differentiate normal behavior versus a normalized behavior. A normalized behavior is a behavior where we're socialized to believe that this is the way we're supposed to be, that it's abnormal not to be this way, and people strive to be a part typically of the dominant norm, of the social norm when a behavior is normalized. What that means is that there are, like the sociologist Allan Johnson said, these invisible paths of least resistance woven through society. It basically means that it's the least resistance is to go along with the norm, and carnism is structured just to make it so much easier to eat animals and so much more difficult not to eat animals. When you don't eat animals, you're actually perceived as abnormal, and not only are you often socially marginalized, but it's just so much easier for you to find carnistic products, to have a doctor who actually supports what you're doing. I mean, thankfully, this is changing now, but when a behavior is normalized, basically what this means is it's a behavior that encourages people to follow in the path of that social norm.
When I talked about eating animals being natural, right, the primary way that this myth is disseminated is through the institutions of science and of history, right? And by defining a behavior or practice or belief system as natural I mean, this is something that has been done again throughout human history to maintain an oppressive status quo. And we just look at eugenics, you know, or craniometry that the Nazis used to prove the supremacy of the Aryans in order to justify the genocide that they were carrying out. And it's true when I talk about, like, eating animals being natural scientifically and also looking at this issue through the lens of history. It is true that we have eaten animals as a species for millennia. There's no question. But we have to remember that when we're looking at the situation through the lens of science or through the lens of history, we're looking through the lens of carnistic science and carnistic history. When we look through the lens of carnistic history, we only look as far back as we need to to justify our current carnistic practices or behaviors, right? Like our oldest ancestors, oldest oldest ancestors were fruitarians - eating the occasional insect that was embedded in a piece of fruit, but we only look as far back as we need to to our hunting or scavenging ancestors. And, frankly, just because a behavior has been carried out for a long time, I mean, we've been raping and murdering people for as long as we've been eating animals, and we don't use the longevity of these practices as a justification for them today.
And of course, we use this argument that eating animals is necessary. You know, it's often necessary for survival, believing that we're going to get sick and die if we're not eating animals or necessary for health. When we believe that something's a necessity, then not doing so is almost like an act of suicide, right? We have to do this in order for our wellbeing and our survival. Therefore, we take the whole ethical dimension out of it. And I believe that today, because more and more people are becoming aware of the fact that eating animals is not necessary, I mean, it is necessary to maintain the carnistic status quo. It is necessary to maintain the problems that we see today, but it's not necessary for our survival or our wellbeing. In fact, the opposite is actually true. And so more and more people are becoming aware of this, and so the issue of eating animals is taking on an ethical dimension that it hasn't had before. But when we look at atrocities that have been committed throughout human history, we can see that virtually all of them have been buoyed by these arguments, and in particular by the myth of necessity - the genocide, the atrocity, is necessary for the survival of the gender, of the species, of the race, and so on.
Alan Ware 15:53
Yeah. And we felt at Population Balance that often having a child has been treated with the three N's of natural, normal and necessary. And whereas you can say the desire for sex may be natural, for some people maybe not but more so, having children is not for everyone, and doesn't necessarily mean that it's natural. And more people are opting to be childfree, so the idea of what is normal is changing in all kinds of different cultures. But there are a lot of people, strong voices especially on the political right, arguing for kind of a necessity of child rearing for the sake of strong families, strong nations, strong economies. So we definitely see the 3 N's being used in pronatalist norms.
Nandita Bajaj 16:38
I actually want to give a shout out to a colleague of mine, Jenny Mace, who took a graduate course that I teach, and because we look at human supremacy and pronatalism, this pressure to have children, she had for her project connected your work of the three N's for carnism to three N's of pronatalism. And I know she's writing a paper on it, so I wanted to make sure she gets the credit for making that connection. But it is so, so similar to carnism - the institutions that benefit from engaging in these practices that put a lot of money behind media and science narratives. And also, I think the degree of impact that any of our movements is having is visible when the degree of backlash is so strong. And we're seeing how aggressively the animal agriculture industry is pushing back against these things, including putting out really spurious research to justify carnism. And you've written about a cognitive trio of objectification, deindividuation, and dichotomization that explain the psychological mechanisms that allow people to act against their own compassionate values. Could you describe how this trio helps sustain carnism?
Melanie Joy 18:06
Yeah, absolutely. And the point that you made about the backlash, and you're 100% right, and so backlash - usually, activists get freaked out by it, but it's often a very good sign, as you say. You know, I've written about the carnistic backlash, where one piece of this is that not eating animals is framed as abnormal, unnatural and unnecessary as well. And we're hearing more and more of that. I mean, it's interesting, because veganism is getting more support, and at the same time, there's this kind of increasing backlash against it.
So the cognitive trio that I wrote about and for listeners like the names of these defenses are really not that important. So one, deindividualization, it's basically the process by which we fail to recognize the individuality of another. In this case, I'm talking about farmed animals, right? So basically, carnism teaches us to, you know, think of farmed animals as lacking any individuality or any personality of their own. So we just think a pig is a pig, and all pigs are the same. And this is a distancing mechanism. It makes it easier for us to support violence towards them. Objectification causes us to see farmed animals as objects. So for example, we learn to refer to the chicken on our plate as some thing rather than some one. And dichotomization is simply this process of putting, in this case we're talking about animals in categories, essentially in our minds, and so that we have very different attitudes and therefore different feelings, and therefore practice very different behaviors towards different types of species. Dogs we love. Pigs, chickens, and cows we eat. So these are simply mental processes that distance us from the reality of the violence, essentially, of carnism.
Alan Ware 19:46
I like how a lot of these principles and processes that we're talking about supporting carnism, you've also used in more recent work, especially to look at other forms of oppression, especially of some people over other people. Could you explain how these cognitive distortions that sustain carnism are distortions fundamental to oppression and social injustice within human relationships?
Melanie Joy 20:10
Sure. I mean, you can see these same mechanisms in interpersonal relationships, where we're not even talking about oppressive systems, just the way that our mind distorts the experience of whoever it is that we're angry at, lashing out at, defensive against, and so on. We can talk about some men describe themselves as a leg man or a breast man when they're referring to how they feel about women. I mean, I think probably we look at patriarchy, it's, you know, not that difficult to see the objectification of women and people of various genders as well. When we think about deindividualization, I mean, it's very common when you hear political rhetoric. For example, talking about Muslims - 'all Muslims', 'those people', 'immigrants' - when these individuals or groups are being referred to, it's without nuance. It's without respect for acknowledgement of the dignity of the uniqueness of the characters and the individuals within them. We're just perceiving somebody as a member of a group about which we've made generalized, stereotypical, usually negative assumptions.
You know, and of course, we put people in moral categories in our minds just the way we put nonhuman animals in moral categories in our minds. So we would never bomb children here in Germany or in the US. And yet we have no problem, or at least many people have no problem, supporting the very same violent behaviors to be enacted against children in other places in the world. And I think it's really just important to recognize that when we look at violence, oppression, unjust behaviors, the mentality at the core of them is always the same. It doesn't matter. Even though the experience of each set of victims of unjust systems or oppressive systems will always be unique, the systems themselves are structurally similar. And most importantly, the mentality that enables those systems to stay intact, that enables the violence within those systems, is exactly the same. And this is the same mentality that also causes interpersonal problems, whether it's with a smaller systems. I mean, here we're talking about broader systems, family systems, toxic workplaces, infighting in social justice movements that are established in order to end the oppression in the first place. And I know we'll get into that a little bit, but you know, I really like your questions, sort of touching on this interconnectedness when it comes to the attitudes and behaviors driving various forms of oppression and violence.
Nandita Bajaj 22:33
Along those lines, you also emphasize the importance of witnessing as a tool to dispel the denial and dissociation that supports oppressive systems, how we consciously engage in disentangling ourselves from these practices. What are the emotional and social challenges people face when they start witnessing human and animal suffering, and what is the argument for why one should engage in this kind of work?
Melanie Joy 23:05
I describe witnessing as seeing the truth of what's happening with your eyes and minds cognitively as well as your heart emotionally and opening up empathically, to the degree that one can. Some people are better able to cognitively witness than emotionally or vice versa, and that can be very painful for people. It's one of the reasons people turn away from atrocities, because it hurts to witness. And I wouldn't say witnessing is the solution to all of our world's problems, but it has to be a part of any solution. It's basically the opposite of denial. It's the opposite of this sort of like numbing that we've been talking about in general, and so it's seeing and feeling more authentically. So I mean, the power of witnessing is that when you do bear witness, you are in a position to truly become a part of the solution. It's hard to be a part of the solution if you don't actually know what's really going on. And by bearing witness, I do not mean taking in graphic imagery and traumatizing yourself with that kind of material. That's not necessary for many people, and most people who are involved in activism, at least animal activism, tend to do that too much, in my opinion. But it does empower you to really become a part of the solution and to live your life more authentically, because you are seeing and feeling more authentically, more clearly.
And it's important to just know your boundaries and to protect them, especially if you're a sensitive person, which is true for many people who are drawn to this kind of work. And what that means is that you don't over-witness. You don't expose yourself to traumatizing material unless you absolutely have to - it's for your job or whatever. You give yourself permission to take in the facts and know what you need to enough so that you can become proactive as part of a solution, and don't make others unintentional witnesses and cross their boundaries. Protect other people's boundaries as well. There are high rates of trauma in the animal rights movement, and for very good reason. Many people have been traumatized by what they've seen, what they're aware of, and many activists unwittingly traumatize others by sharing graphic information and graphic imagery that then just sort of like feeds the traumatic experience of other activists. So just be really careful with witnessing. I like to quote Eddie Lama, an activist he was in, actually the movie, the star of the documentary film called The Witness, who talked about sort of the power of waking up to the truth. And he said, I know the reality is so overwhelming. The numbers are so staggering. I know that animals are going to continue to suffer and die, but not because of me. And that motivates me. That helps me recognize the power of me as a witness.
Nandita Bajaj 25:32
That is such a powerful quote, because I think for a lot of animal advocates, like you said, there is a tendency to want to over-witness, because there is a guilt associated with the fact that animals are experiencing so much pain and suffering every single day in quantities that are just unimaginable, that you almost feel like you are turning your back if you refuse to constantly be part of that suffering too.
Melanie Joy 26:01
Yeah, and I would say being traumatized causes us to be dysregulated. And basically, when you're dysregulated, it means that your nervous system is out of balance. And if you think about waking up in the morning and sipping your morning coffee or tea and opening your laptop, and, you know, checking your email, and all of a sudden you've got an email with like, urgent, all caps, exclamation points subject heading, you know what it feels like to get dysregulated. People who are activists, particularly those who have trauma from their activism - just simply being a vegan in a dominant animal eating culture - can be very dysregulating. And when we are dysregulated, and there have been a lot of studies on this, we have less access to our rational faculties. We're basically less rational and we're less connected with our empathy, and we're more likely to dysregulate other people. We're less likely to be able to communicate skillfully and relate in a way that's helpful. Dysregulated people dysregulate people. So the number one thing in my opinion that any of us can do, who wants to work to create a better world, is to fully commit to our own regulation. And we have lots of resources for that. I'll share with you ways to get resources. But I believe that if everybody working in movements to help create a better world really understood what it means to be regulated and knew how to self-regulate and help others regulate, we would probably transform our movements in a very short period of time and be far more impactful than we could ever otherwise be, and save ourselves a lot of unnecessary suffering in the process.
Alan Ware 27:33
So that emotional regulation would be key to better relational literacy, which is a big element in your latest book, End Injustice Everywhere. You emphasize that relational dysfunction is the common denominator among all forms of abuse and oppression, and that we need to become relationally literate if we want to transform those systems. So given the history of us human beings as a highly cooperative, social species, what do you think has led to this relational dysfunction within the dominant culture?
Melanie Joy 28:05
First of all, I would say that relational dysfunction, which I would say is dysfunctional ways of relating. It's relating to others or other animals, other humans, oneself. We're always relating to ourselves through our self talk and the choices that we make that impact our future selves. It's relating in a way that results in a sense of disconnection rather than connection, and insecurity rather than security, and often power imbalance, as opposed to balanced power. So relational dysfunction is relating in a way that leads to harm, disconnection, insecurity, and often power imbalances. Just so that listeners know what I'm referring to with this. I wouldn't say that it's the common denominator among all forms of abuse and oppression, but it is a common denominator, and it's a very important one. It's a fundamental one, because it affects everything else. So you asked, why, if we're a cooperative species, why is there so much relational dysfunction within the dominant culture? And it is true that we are cooperative. I mean, we're hardwired to feel empathy for others. We know there have been plenty of studies on this. We're hardwired to seek meaningful connections and to avoid the pain of disconnection.
It's also true that we're hardwired to react to stressors by becoming defensive, and what this means is getting dysregulated. And when we get dysregulated, we tend to go into fight or flight. It is a form of fight or flight, essentially. And when we're in that state, we're basically thinking about what we can do to survive, even if it's just sort of mild. We're in a defensive state, and we're looking to protect ourselves. And generally, the way that we automatically protect ourselves is through attack or withdrawal. Unfortunately, we have, and I've said this many times, you know, when talking about relational literacy, which I define as the understanding of and ability to practice healthy ways of relating, most of us have to learn complicated geometry that we'll probably never need to use, and yet we don't get a single formal lesson in how to be healthy relational beings, which of course, includes how to communicate skillfully, since communication is the primary way we relate. So it's not surprising, given that we do have these hardwired tendencies to react and go into fight or flight/dysregulation, and we haven't been given the tools or the guidance or the training necessary to learn how to navigate our experience and build the self awareness we need to so that we can choose a different way, when we're triggered, when we're upset, when we feel under threat. And then on top of it, we're, you know, being conditioned over and over and over again by capitalism and patriarchy and carnism and speciesism and all of these other isms that are basically encouraging us to engage in these nonrelational behaviors, feeding the systems and harming ourselves in the process.
Alan Ware 30:49
Right. You talk about the paradox of privilege, that a lot of privileged people are not aware of the power they have. They become kind of blind, partly I suppose to witnessing suffering, and oblivious to their advantages, and then very reactively defend privilege or create a myth of meritocracy that we have our privilege because we've worked harder, we deserve it. So that would seem to be part of that relational literacy too.
Melanie Joy 31:15
Yeah. I mean building relational literacy is basically it is, in my opinion, like one of the most transformational things that anybody can do. If our population, like were even 5% more relationally literate, it would change a lot. I mean, if our collective level of relational literacy weren't so low, we would not elect relationally dysfunctional leaders and support relationally toxic policies. I mean, people would know better. We'd watch, you know, the debate, and recognize relational dysfunction when we see it.
Nandita Bajaj 31:46
Yeah, I love the emphasis that you're putting on regulating ourselves, because I think within any advocacy movement, there is a tendency to want to quickly get the most effective strategies - you know, what is step one, two, and three to go out and have the most impact. And absent from that analysis often is the relational aspect, of is like who you are as a person. How do you come across to other people? How do you relate to other people? That takes a lot more work than learning a couple of strategies that you want to have translated into some impact, which without having done our own work, it can, as you have demonstrated, lead to a lot of unimpactful work.
Melanie Joy 32:34
Yeah, and I would say it takes work, and it's also a lot of it is skill building, right? So people don't have to spend a decade in therapy. Anybody who wants to build relational literacy skills can. It's not rocket science. It does require commitment, but it is something that is accessible to anybody who really is committed to doing it.
Nandita Bajaj 32:53
And can you speak to some of that cultivation of skills? How do we build them?
Melanie Joy 32:59
Well, I actually wrote a book called Getting Relationships Right for this very reason. And this is not just a plug for my book. I really did not want to write that book, because I was very busy doing other things, but I could not find a single book in all of the books that were out there. And there are many great, great books, but I wanted a book that would be like a one stop guide for people to building relational literacy, like here are the key things that are most important to know. And if you want to take the next steps, fine, but if you just use this, this should give you a really good foundation. Relational literacy is based on a number of different principles and tools, but all of them are based on what I refer to as the formula for healthy relating. It's like a formula here, and it's quite simple in some ways.
Basically, in a healthy interaction, this includes a healthy communication. As I said, communication is the primary way we relate - doesn't matter who we're interacting with, another human, as social groups, you know, collectively. If we're standing on a platform giving a public talk, you know, relating to ourselves or relating to whoever, in a healthy interaction we practice integrity and honor dignity, and this leads to a sense of connection and security. And when we practice integrity, to simplify that, we're basically practicing the core moral values of compassion and justice, which is treating others the way we would want to be treated if we were in their position, right? So you practice integrity as essentially practicing respect. When you honor dignity, that means you think of and treat that other individual or yourself as fundamentally worthy. You recognize their inherent worth. You don't see them as any less worthy than you or anyone else of being treated with respect and occupying space on the planet. When we do this, we create a sense of connection and security.
And I mean, of course, healthy relating exists on a spectrum. Rarely is an interaction healthy or unhealthy, functional or dysfunctional, relational and nonrelational. It's more or less so, right? So on the other side of the spectrum are what I call nonrelational, these are the dysfunctional behaviors, right? And these are behaviors where we violate integrity, we harm dignity, and we create a sense of insecurity and disconnection and sometimes even unjust power imbalances. And so this is something that we can come back to at any point. You know, whenever you're having an interaction with somebody or yourself and you're starting to feel a little wonky, a little off, pause and ask yourself, Do I feel like I'm practicing the formula? Do I feel like they're practicing the formula toward me? And this can be a bit of an abstraction, but the practical tools are all built on this one formula, and you can use this like your relational compass. It keeps you heading in the right direction. We can always come back to the formula at any point in time.
Nandita Bajaj 35:39
And is there an example that you can give in how you engage, say, with someone who is holding a different or oppositional view?
Melanie Joy 35:50
Well, the practice starts in your mind, in your head. You know, it starts with the attitude and recognizing that nobody is better or worse than anybody else, regardless of our behaviors. You can recognize problematic behaviors and commit to holding people accountable, but we can do this while honoring their dignity. That means recognizing that each and every one of us is nothing more and nothing less than the hard wiring and biology we were born with and every single experience we've had throughout our lives. This is a psychological reality. There is no way we could be different from who and how we are. Judging people because of who and how they are, it just makes no psychological sense. And it causes a lot of suffering for ourselves and for others. Again, I'm not excusing problematic behaviors. I'm explaining human psychology, and giving ourselves permission not to judge and stand in contempt of other people will relieve a tremendous burden from us, and it will help us approach our advocacy from a place of genuine compassion.
You know, because when we're in a place of contempt, where we're looking down on others, we're disconnected from our compassion, and that says more about us than it does about them. They have done studies, plenty of studies, and they have shown that people who feel shamed, or even the threat of being shamed, become dysregulated, and basically they get defensive and they shut down. So if we want to communicate effectively with people, we begin in ourselves, and we begin with our attitude, and then commit to a healthy communicative process. And in every communication, there are these two parts. There's the content, what we're communicating about, and then there's the process, how we're communicating. Most of us over-focus on the content. We want to get the facts straight. We want to get the words right. We want to say everything in just the perfect way. But the process matters more. Like if you think about a conversation you had maybe six months or a year ago, there's a chance that you don't even remember the content at all, but you probably remember how you felt in the conversation. The process determines how you feel.
When our process is healthy, we can talk about anything without arguing, and when our process is unhealthy, we can't talk about anything without arguing. A healthy process is based on the formula, and in a healthy process, our agenda is not to be right, which means to make the other person wrong. It's not to win, which means to make the other person lose. Our agenda, our goal is simply mutual understanding. It doesn't mean that we don't want to share information with people, but we need to have as our goal, first, mutual understanding, and after that, we can share our opinion and invite people to look at the world through our eyes and not be invested in the outcome. Legislation forces change, and that's fine. We want to work toward legislative change, but what we're talking about here is communication. It's advocacy. We can't force change, and adults who feel that they're being forced or controlled are adults who resist what they're hearing.
Alan Ware 38:32
In your book, you did talk a lot about shame not being effective, and I thought of some of the work with anthropologists and hunter gatherers, where they often use shame and ridicule to somebody who's being very selfish and self-interested. How would you differentiate that kind of social shame that gets someone who's being very selfish from the kind of shame work you're talking about?
Melanie Joy 38:55
Well, I mean, according to Brené Brown, who's arguably the leading researcher in the world on shame, all shame is toxic shame. There's no such thing as toxic versus non-toxic shame. Shame has been used to maintain, quote, unquote, social harmony. The question is whether social harmony could have been maintained without shaming individuals in the process, by helping people recognize the problematic behaviors they're engaging in so their natural reaction to that would be to feel guilt, not shame, in a healthy culture anyway. So guilt is a feeling we have about a behavior, and it causes remorse. It makes us want to course correct. Shame is a feeling we have about ourselves, and it typically causes us to withdraw or attack in self defense. Because we live in a relationally dysfunctional mess of a world, most people don't stay in guilt. They start to feel guilt and it flips into shame. So I don't advocate any shame. I advocate objectively, clearly, and compassionately raising awareness of a problematic behavior and providing opportunities for how to rectify that, and obviously, sometimes people have to go to prison or whatever. I'm not talking about these situations, but you know, effective communication is helping people to recognize their problematic behaviors and take responsibility for them. Some people won't do that, in which case, other measures have to be used. But what we're talking about here is simply communication. It's not about, like, the legal system.
Nandita Bajaj 40:17
One thing I was having a hard time wrapping my head around is you know, there's this investigative journalism that has to expose these large scale, oppressive, hierarchical systems, say sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, for example, had to be exposed, or the 'me too' movement, you know, where you kind of have to engage in public shaming of a certain behavior, or at least people have engaged in publicly shaming.
Melanie Joy 40:49
Yeah, I wouldn't say you have to engage in public shaming. And I don't think that what I'm talking about applies only one on one, not at all. It's probably even more important when somebody is funneling their communication through the megaphone of digital media. What kind of attitude are we modeling for people? What kind of world do we want to create? And we do that through our communication. And we can hold people accountable without harming their dignity. And we can hold people accountable by making it clear that these behaviors are unacceptable. We can hold people accountable. Investigative journalism, you know, which is exposing problematic behaviors, and that does not have to be shaming. Facts speak for themselves. We can raise awareness of problematic behaviors by exposing them, and I think that's very important to do in many cases anyway, without saying, oh, you piece of crap in the process. That second piece, that's the problem. And if we want to sort of win supporters, essentially, we don't look like safe people when we're representing a cause, and we are engaging in behaviors that are just unnecessarily harmful, like there's no reason to be stooping to the point where we're actually putting people down in the process of highlighting the problems that they're causing.
Alan Ware 42:00
That clears it up for me a bit. Made me think of the civil rights leaders in the US South in the 60s, often wanting to have a public spectacle, wanting to show the country through network TV, what was happening, and I was thinking of that as shame, but in your frame, they're showing the facts. They don't have to pile on with a shameful message. They don't have to say anything.
Melanie Joy 42:22
Exactly. The facts speak for themselves. I mean, when you look at Martin Luther King, you look at Gandhi, you look at some of these incredible leaders who are committed to nonviolence, the beauty of their work was that they held a mirror up to the violence and the shaming behaviors of the others and the harmful behaviors of the others without descending into that kind of rhetoric themselves, and they didn't have to.
Alan Ware 42:41
You've noted that infighting is a recurring issue in many social justice movements, including animal advocacy, and you've even created a website dedicated to ending infighting among social justice groups called infighting.org. How would you describe infighting within social justice groups, and what are its main causes?
Melanie Joy 43:01
So we've already touched on a lot of this, so I'll just sort of briefly mention, you know, infighting is relational dysfunction. It's just like any kind of fighting, what we could call out fighting, but it's directed toward members of one's own group. It's the same problematic attitudes and behaviors that we've already been talking about that are getting played out within social justice groups and movements. And the causes are the same as they are for other kinds of fighting where, like as I said, where most of us have not been taught relational literacy. So when we have a difference of need or opinion from someone, we tend to use force. Our goal is to try to make them wrong and get them to agree with us. But then there are these other issues as well that are sort of layered on top of this. So there are high rates of traumatization among activists, and trauma tends to affect our perceptions and cause us to see the world in terms of like victims, perpetrators, and heroes, and place people into these rigid categories. And there are high rates of dysregulation. There is a lot of anger, which is in and of itself it's not a problem. Anger is an important emotion. It motivates us to take action, positive action, and when we don't relate to our anger in a healthy way, it becomes harmful rather than helpful, and again, most people haven't been given the tools in order to do that. So there are these various reasons that we see, you know, also, high rates of burnout as well, because for perhaps obvious reasons among activists. So on our website, infighting.org there's a lot of resources. It's a very, very comprehensive website. So anybody who is interested in any of the issues actually we've talked about today learning more about them, people can go to carnism.org for that, but in terms of regulation and trauma and effective communication and the formula and relational literacy and relational dysfunction, they can find information about all of that at infighting.org.
Alan Ware 44:50
And I like how you do differentiate between infighting and healthy disagreement. You don't want to shut down potential healthy disagreement. I mean, we have some disagreements with people who otherwise might seem on our side with ecological sustainability, but they believe we can green grow through technology, through mining for renewable energy. They don't see, as we do, the level of ecological overshoot being as dire, or the level of species extinction being as dire. So we see that very much as a healthy disagreement. So there's the need for that, right, within movements to have different perspectives, to disagree in a healthy way?
Melanie Joy 45:29
I'm so glad you brought that up, and I do say this in my book in How to End Injustice Everywhere and on the website as well. Infighting is not 'indisagreeing'. Disagreements are very, very important. Disagreements help us grow. They help us become more strategic. We want to make sure that we don't silence critical voices who are perhaps raising awareness of abuses of power, voices of BIPOC and women and people who have been marginalized and really do need to be able to speak out and challenge some dysfunctional and problematic behaviors within movements and groups.
Alan Ware 46:05
And I like how you also highlight the integrity of the information or the accountability of our information sharing. Are we spreading false information? Have we evaluated the credibility of the information source or doing reductive thinking to an extreme amount, because a lot of what people are communicating online through social media is half-baked, half-considered notions and facts that may or may not be facts. And what are some tools and practices you'd recommend to help end infighting?
Melanie Joy 46:36
Working on self-regulation is very important. Building relational literacy is very important. In my book, Beyond Beliefs, and I believe it's on the website as well, we have a questionnaire where you can check basically whether you have secondary traumatic stress so that you can determine whether you're being affected by or have been affected by some of the traumatic material you've been witnessing and really learning how to communicate skillfully. That's really it. And one thing that everybody can do right now is commit to not being a bystander. A lot of infighting is probably better called 'inbullying'. It's one individual using their platform to attack another or others, and so these dysfunctional or unskillful ways of communicating that are infighting, most of that's happening online, because most communication is happening online. So what we could all do is commit to not being a bystander, not liking and not sharing and not allowing any form of communication that is not skillful, not kind, on our feeds. And when I say skillful, I mean relational, healthy.
Nandita Bajaj 47:34
You've talked about a few ways on how people can prevent falling into a state of despair and trauma and numbing ourselves. How do you stay grounded and motivated in advancing greater justice and well being for people and animals?
Melanie Joy 47:51
I've been an activist for a long time, but I've learned over the years the importance of really taking my wellbeing seriously and just really committed to my own mental health hygiene and physical health hygiene, but like really having support and building relationships. So studies have shown this as well - people who have fulfilling, connected relationships tend to fare better in every aspect of life and to be more resilient. You know, self care is not something that should be stuck in this individualistic model. Self care involves allowing ourselves to invest in and connect with people or beings around us who we care about. So building healthy relationships, you know, for me, that means making sure that I always prioritize, in many ways, the relationships in my life, where I give them the priority they deserve, and taking care of my own mind. And I have a meditation practice that's really central to my life.
I don't want listeners to get a sense that this is a lot of work for them, because the last thing people who are working to make the world a better place need is one more thing on their to-do list. We tend to be conscientious people and like, Okay, now I'm going to get really good at relational literacy. Like, now I'm going to really work on myself. It doesn't need to be. People can work at this to whatever degree they want to, and it can be interesting and pleasurable and sort of part of what they give to themselves to relax and do. It doesn't have to be a deep dive into sort of deconstructing your ego and revisiting your trauma history and your childhood. I mean, for some people, maybe that's how they want to go and need to go. But for many people, building relational literacy and just giving themselves permission to focus on themselves and their own growth can be a gentle act of love for themselves that doesn't cause them to feel like it's another 'to do'.
Nandita Bajaj 49:36
That's brilliant. Yeah, Melanie, it's been such a pleasure having you on today. This was such a helpful conversation. Your work in challenging carnism, in fostering stronger relational literacy and also just giving such helpful tips on how to do this kind of heart-centered work has been so inspiring.
Melanie Joy 49:58
Well, thank you. It's a pleasure. I think you guys are doing great work and really important work. It's an honor to be having this conversation with you, from my end as well.
Alan Ware 50:07
That's all for this edition of the Overpopulation Podcast. Visit populationbalance.org to learn more. To share feedback or guest recommendations, write to us using the contact form on our site or by emailing us at podcast@populationbalance.org. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate us on your favorite podcast platform and share it widely. We couldn't do this work without the support of listeners like you, and we hope that you'll consider a one-time or a recurring donation
Nandita Bajaj 50:37
Until next time I'm Nandita Bajaj, thanking you for your interest in our work and for your efforts in helping us all shrink toward abundance.
